Team USA Set For World Championships

INDIANAPOLIS – Reigning world champions Tyson Gay, Bernard Lagat, Allyson Felix, Jeremy Wariner, Kerron Clement, Michelle Perry, Reese Hoffa and Brad Walker
will lead a potent Team USA roster at the 2009 IAAF World Outdoor Track
& Field Championships. USA Track & Field on Tuesday announced
the Team USA roster for the 12th edition of the Championships, which will be held August 15-23 in Berlin, Germany.

This
will be the first time Team USA has returned to Berlin for a major
international championship competition since the 1936 Olympic Games,
where National Track & Field Hall of Famer Jesse Owens won gold
medals in the 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay and long jump.

“These
World Championships are special to us for many reasons,” said USATF CEO
Doug Logan. “It is Team USA’s chance to come back strong in the
post-Olympic year, and it is an opportunity to honor the incredible
legacy of the great Jesse Owens. We feel our team roster will represent
the United States well on both counts.”

At
the most recent World Outdoor Championships in 2007 in Osaka, Japan,
Team USA tied the all-time World Championships record for gold medals
with 14, matching its feat from 2005, and tied the American all-time
medal tally at a World Outdoor Championships with 26. In Osaka, Team
USA led a medal table in which a record 46 countries won medals. When
Team USA last won 26 medals at a World Outdoor Championships in 1991,
just 29 countries appeared on the medal table.

Team
USA has dominated the 11 previous World Outdoor Championships with its
overall total of 228 medals (110 gold, 60 silver, 38 bronze).Russia is in second place on the all-time medal table with 122 medals (33 gold, 51 silver, 38 bronze).

The
highly accomplished 2009 Team USA squad consists of 20 Olympic
medalists, 28 World Outdoor Championships medalists and 10 American
record holders.

Reigning world champions include Tyson Gay,
who will look to defend his world 100m and 200m titles from the 2007
Championships in Osaka, Japan. Gay won the 100m gold medal in 9.85
seconds and captured the world crown in the 200m by running 19.76.
Gay’s 200m performance bettered National Track & Field Hall of
Famer Michael Johnson’s World Outdoor Championships record of 19.79 set
in 1995.

Gay posted the fastest 100m time in the world this year
of 9.77 seconds with his win in Rome on July 10, and he also tops the
world list in the 200m with his 19.58 clocking at the Reebok Grand Prix
in New York on May 30, which is the third-fastest 200m in history.

Also looking to defend two world titles in Berlin will be two-time Olympic medalist Bernard Lagat,
who became the first man ever to achieve the 1,500m/5,000m double at a
World Outdoor Championships in Osaka. Lagat won the 1,500m in 3 minutes
34.77 seconds, and the 5,000m in 13:45.87.

Two-time Olympic 200m silver medalist Allyson Felix
made history of her own in Osaka in becoming only the second woman ever
to win three gold medals at a World Outdoor Championships. Felix, who
won gold in the 4x100m and 4x400m relays, won the women’s 200 meters in
21.81 seconds, giving her the greatest margin of victory (.53) in that
event in World Championships history.

Other Americans looking to defend their Osaka individual world titles include 2008 Olympic Games silver medalist Kerron Clement in the men’s 400m hurdles, American record holder Brad Walker in the men’s pole vault, 2006 World Indoor champion Reese Hoffa in the men’s shot put, and 2005 and 2007 women’s 100m hurdles world champion Michelle Perry.